Pre-Scool

The other day, while we were at the jetty attempting to catch another fish, we saw a group of lots of little tiny silver fish swimming around under us. "Look," says Imogen, "it's a pre-school of fish!" They were small.

We caught a tiny little rock cod, while Imogen, Emily and Charlotte danced in the outgoing tide on the bottom platform of the jetty. The fish, like us, went back to its home.

Regular readers will know that yesterday was Monday, and that this means comments about the pre-school bus and the box of vegetables. The bus has been very reliable recently. (So have the vegetables, actually!) After Imi got on the bus, I ran (well, walked very quickly) to preschool myself (with the buggy) to chat to the teacher about Imi's progress. We're very proud about how well she's done settling in there in such a short space of time. She has made a particular effort to try to get to know different children in the class, choosing someone different each time they are asked to "choose a friend to go to the bathroom with." (Insert your own joke here.)

Today Imogen came home from pre-school with a home-made robot (though I'm not sure it can do the washing up or put Emily and Charlotte in the bath, as the cardboard boxes would go all soggy) and the biggest piece of artwork I've ever seen outside a major art gallery.

If I seem distracted while writing this, it's because I'm trying to prepare a teaching session on otitis media, tonsillitis, sinusitis and other respiratory tract kind of illnesses. In my mind I'm trying to sift the evidence around diagnosis (which symptoms and signs are most significant) and which treatments are most effective, and does it matter whether your patient is indigenous or not? You might find all this quite boring. Strangely enough I don't (that's why I'm a GP!) For something that we blithely call "minor illness" it's not minor for the patient, because it makes you feel like you're about to die and, as it turns out, it's not minor for the doctor trying to navigate your way through a maze of evidence and uncertainty about the best thing to do.

What? You'd rather hear about those small fish again? Well, because they were very small, Imogen said it was a pre-school of fish. I wonder where she gets her sense of humour from?